This fascinating book is a rich weaving of many, many stories of this most sacred plot of land in America. "This Hallowed Ground" was a brilliant idea, faithfully executed. There's scarcely a page that does not illicit a gasp or a tear. Wish the author had taken the time to tell us more about the history of that piece of land before the Civil War. Its location dictates that it must have been the scene of some worthwhile dramas in colonial and ante-bellum times. ( )

A fantastic book. Arlington National Cemetery, the most hallowed ground in the United States, deserves to have a book written of this caliber. Mr. Poole does an excellent job of blending the history with the personal stories of the brave men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion to their country, as well as those tasked with keeping their memory alive. ( )

This engaging history of Arlington National Cemetery, America’s most hallowed military burial ground and home to over 300,000 soldiers, officers and statesmen, is also the story of America’s maturation through death and war.

Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.

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WILLIAM GLADSTONE

Dedication

BENEDICTION (located at back of volume)

For all the dead at Arlington,Requiescant in pace.

For all the living, a line of wisdom from an army chaplain who has buried hundreds of comrades at Arlington: "Life is short. Live it well."

First words

PrologueIt was a beautiful day for a funeral. The last of the season's cherry blossoms drifted on a cool breeze, which carried the scent of cut grass and wet stone over Arlington National Cemetery. Somewhere in the distance, the early morning mowing subsided, soon to be overtaken by the all-day crack of rifles, the rattle of horse-drawn caissons, and the mournful sound of Taps floating among the tombstones.

Wikipedia in English

An intimate, behind-the-scenes chronicle of America’s most sacred ground.

“Along Eisenhower Drive, as far as the eye could see, the grave markers formed into bone-white brigades, climbed from the flats of the Potomac River, and scattered over the green Virginia hills in perfect order. They reached Arlington’s highest point, where they encircled an old cream-colored mansion with thick columns and a commanding view of the cemetery, the river, and the city beyond. The mansion’s flag, just lowered to half-staff, signaled that it was time to start another day of funerals, which would add more than twenty new conscripts to Arlington’s army of the dead.”

So does Robert Poole describe a day like so many others in the long and storied history of Arlington National Cemetery. Created towards the end of our greatest national crucible, the Civil War, its story—as revealed in On Hallowed Ground—reflects much of America’s own over the past century and a half. The mansion at its heart, and the rolling land on which it sits, had been the family plantation of Robert E. Lee before he joined the Confederacy; strategic to the defense of Washington, it became a Union headquarters, a haven for freedmen, and a burial ground for indigent soldiers before Secretary of War Edwin Stanton made it the latest in the newly established national cemetery system. It would become our nation’s most honored resting place.

No other country makes the effort the United States does to recover and pay tribute to its war dead—an effort Poole reveals in poignant details from the aftermaths of the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the conflicts in the Gulf and Afghanistan today. Every tombstone at Arlington tells a story: from Private William Christman, the first soldier buried at Arlington on May 13, 1864, to Union General Montgomery Meigs, whose idea Arlington was; from Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, the first casualty of powered flight, to Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier; from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, so lovingly tended today, to John F. Kennedy’s eternal flame; from scientists and slaves to jurists and generals and tens of thousands of ordinary citizen-warriors, among the more than 300,000 interred on Arlington’s 624 acres. Their sagas, and the rites and rituals that have evolved at Arlington—the horse-drawn caissons, marble headstones, playing of taps, and rifle salutes—speak to us all.

Chronicles the history of Arlington National Cemetery, originally the ancestral home of Mary Custis Lee, wife of General Robert E. Lee, and tells the story of how it was established as a national resting place for America's fallen soldiers.